Where is ‘Health’

Sep 21, 2017

When the word “health” is referenced, it is usually thought of in the direction towards human beings. As I have explored within myself, health, I have asked myself, “does health exist beyond human beings?” “If humans ceased to exist would health still be apart of the Universe?”

I will explore two components of where health lives within and beyond humanity. These two foundational backbones of health are Order and Community. I will dissect these two words in an attempt to conclude my thoughts on “Where is Health?”

Within the Cosmos there is a Natural Order, or natural law. Planets circulate in orbit around one another. The seasons flow in a circular rhythm in and out of the next season. Upon conception the embryo begins a process of cellular growth that originates from a circulation of cellular activity around the first cell. Even the breath, when done in its origin has a roundness of circulation where the inhalation down the body merges eloquently into the exhalation out of the body, and the exhale then swiftly turn like the bristles of a paint brush on a canvas back into the inhale.

Within everything is an order that allows for the expansion and contraction of Life to begin and end. All the way back from what we can imagine as the Big Bang Theory.

Health is an evolutionary impulse behind all of Life. It is the spark of light within darkness that creates the birth of something new. Life beckons evolution and expansion. Although death is equal in health as part of the natural order of Life. The death of a Star or planet. The death of a tree or human being. The death of old cells that then birth new cells.

It is this end, this ceasing that allows for the circulating rhythm and flow of Life to carry forth the next wave of birth and creation to physical form.

Order is not linear. It does not just create and cease. It is a constant ebb and flow of expansion and contraction folding over itself layer after layer. Creation and Death do not just happen as a singular occurrence or in sequential order. Life and Death both, are happening within you right now billions of times over one another. Although creation and death can seem like polar opposites and occur at different times, at their core they are equally apart of the same moment.

Now I will turn my attention towards community and then make an attempt to connect both Community and Order together as a bridge to explore where health is.

All of Life is connected. Scientists today believe that each human being is made up of stardust from the cosmos. There is a connection within us to all that lives within the Universe.

Within humanity, I relate this connection to community. In a community, for example, in the Native American Indian culture, or many of our tribal ancestors, each person is a part of something greater than themselves. They themselves have an individual role and purpose. There is the hunter, the farmer, the care taker of the young and old, the old wise one, the clothes maker, and so forth. From the eldest to the youngest, there is a role that each individual plays, however, it is the body of them all that gives them Order. This is the community. This is health.

What is true in a tribe is also true within our bodies. The body has many parts. The heart, feet, central nervous system, spinal cord, Dura mater, neural activity, bones, fascia, consciousness, etc. Each of these anatomical parts has a role and can carry out the function even if our awareness of that part is cut off from the whole of the body. However, the cutting off of our awareness, the disembodiment, is the beginning of the cycle of death. This is Life. So when you have experience a major trauma such as a car crash and injured your shoulder. It is likely that the shoulder will contract in a very complex way, creating a sense of not feeling safe or protection, that can result as our disconnect to it to the rest of our body.

To conclude, Health is in Creation or birth, and Death or end. I myself in writing this have become aware of my own self interested judgments towards what is health. That separation, disconnection, darkness, tightness, blockage is not health, or healthy, and birth, flow, openness, light, expansion goes towards health. But as I question each thought from Truth, is this true without my self interest? “IS THAT SO?” I am led to see that health lives within both life and death, and our health is granted by the relationship between Creation and Death. Expansion and Contraction.

Although, to be paradoxical in my previous statement, which life is, death alone is not health. It is the creation that allows death to have its place within health. Health is the formation of new life. It is awareness perceiving itself. It is the the fragmented body, due to trauma, that comes back to wholeness, or embodiment. So to be clear, health is not in death, but without death we would not have birth, therefore, death it an essential part of locating where health is.

Can the leg still exist if it were cut off from our awareness due to trauma? Yes! The leg or the individual who who has been or feels out casted by the community can still exist. The heart will still pump. The arm will still move up and down and the body will still carry out ordinary day to day tasks. However, it is this out casting or exclusion of the leg from the body within our awareness that begins the process of death. And since death is not bad or in opposition to health, then even the traumatized leg is still in the process of health.

For example, If you draw your thought to a part of your body that has had historical pain, lets say your right shoulder. When you bring your mind into that part of your body, can you get a visual sense of the front side of your right shoulder? The back side, top, bottom, under the arm pit, or even inside the bone? Usually when trauma is living within that part of the body, it becomes very challenging to bring our full awareness within that part or within the connection of that part of the body to the rest of our body. To sense within the shoulder and its connection to the neck or hand for example.

This is an example of the the process of death occurring. And when our awareness starts shining light within the area of trauma and we can begin sensing more fully into the specific part of the body and its integration through movement and thought with the rest of our body, then Life or health begins.

Some part of me quivers at the thought of asking this question with a, “Who am I?” to ponder this, but the very idea of accepting life and death, especially death, as equal components of health, or even going a step further into the realization that life and death are not two separate components of health, but one.

Might this be the doorway into eternity?

It seems possible to me that when we accept the end or death of our lives, and its necessary, that it establishes the foundation or womb for the birth, creation, and therefore our health to flourish.

Many religious faiths speak about eternity as a place that exists outside of the body. A place that happens once this life ends. Might it be possible that the narrowness of the collective mass thought historical from humanity could have misunderstood the great teachings from many wise teachers about the truth of Eternity? Might it be that eternity is not a place in which we go to when our spirit leaves our body upon our death, but rather a state of embodiment and integrated awareness of all of Life within this physical lifetime that begins our entry into Eternity?